Copies

Binding: Nineteenth-century English blind-tooled calf; bound for the Bodleian Library. ‘Sancti Gregorii Moralia' in an early hand in black ink along the lower edge.

Size: 336 × 238 × 90 mm.

Size of leaf: 325 × 218 mm.

Early marginal notes, including biblical references, in black ink, also underlining in the text. Some annotations in both red and black, in a sixteenth-century(?) hand.

On c2r a 16-line epigraphic initial ‘R' is supplied in green; other three- to seven-line epigraphic initials are supplied in red or green; pagination (1-656) and chapter numbers are supplied in red or black, some marginal rubrics and verse numbers in red; underlining in red.

On c2r a Venetian 16-line initial ‘R' is supplied in gold surrounded by white vine-stems defined in red, blue, green, and gold, with gold dots, edged in black and gold, and extending into all margins and between the two columns of text. In the middle of the outer margin a circle edged in green contains the figure of S. Gregorius I, wearing a red robe with a golden collar and the papal tiara, holding a book coloured in blue in his left hand, with his right hand raised in blessing, and with a white dove bringing the message of God on his left, all on a blue ground. In the lower margin is a coat of arms on a red ground within a laurel wreath edged in gold. Other similar epigraphic initials are supplied in gold surrounded by white vine-stems defined in red, blue, and green at the beginning of each book. See Pächt and Alexander II, 111 no. pr. 91. Other epigraphic initials and paragraph marks are supplied in red or blue; capitals touched with yellow wash.

Provenance: Unidentified coat of arms on c2r: paly of six or and azure, on a fess gules a pellet(?) sable; Pächt and Alexander suggest ‘ . . . on a fess gules a leopard's mask(?) argent'.
Heavily erased inscription(?) on I4v.
Scars of book-plate on the front pastedown.
Francis Edward Norris (1885-1966).
Presented by Norris in 1952, see BLR 4, 3 (1952), 174.